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Events 2019

LECTURE MEETINGS ARE HELD AT 7.30PM AT TONY COOPER SUITE, COTTENHAM VILLAGE COLLEGE UNLESS SHOWN.

Wednesday 16th Jan.
Sam Leggett ‘Food for thought: evidence for diet in Anglo-Saxon England’
Very little is known about Anglo-Saxon food and diet, with scarce medical texts and limited archaeological evidence of plant and animal remains giving small glimpses into what was eaten in Early Medieval England. However, stable isotopes from bones and teeth can help illuminate what everyday Anglo-Saxons ate and drank. This talk explores published and new stable isotope data from Anglo-Saxon people, looking at changes in diet and mobility through time, space and over individuals’ lives. This will demonstrate how and when the English started eating fish (either freshwater or marine), and consider why this wasn’t common before the Anglo-Saxon period.

Sam is a third year PhD candidate in the Dorothy Garrod Laboratory for Isotopic Analysis at the Department of Archaeology and Newnham College, University of Cambridge. She’s excavated in Australia, England and Scotland, and worked on material from all over the world. Before moving to Cambridge she studied in Australia at the University of Sydney and the University of New England, with a background in immunobiology, as well as in archaeology and medieval history.

Thursday 14th February

Jody Joy ‘Shining light on an old treasure: the Iron Age hoards from Snettisham, Norfolk’

Over the past 60 years, astounding discoveries of precious metal objects, including torcs, bracelets and finger rings, have been made at Ken Hill, Snettisham, Norfolk. In total, 14 separate groups of objects, or hoards, dating to the second and first centuries BC have been discovered. Jody Joy is currently coordinating a major research project including a comprehensive scientific analysis of the objects and a reassessment of the site. He will discuss the results of the project, specifically the discovery of sophisticated metalworking techniques such as surface enrichment and mercury gilding.
Jody Joy is Senior Curator of Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, responsible for British and European Archaeology. He previously worked at the British Museum, where he was Curator of European Iron Age Collections for eight years. He specializes in the archaeology of northwest Europe during the first millennium BC but his research interests also include the later Bronze Age and early Roman periods.

A remarkable Middle Bronze Age twisted gold bar torc was discovered in East Cambridgeshire in 26 September 2015. Weighing 732 grams, measuring 126.5 cm in length, it is one of the largest found in Britain, Ireland and the near Continent, and is regarded as the best to be found in England in more than a century. It is much larger than usual examples and is made of 730g of almost pure gold. The find was made by a metal detectorist in a ploughed field in East Cambridgeshire and was reported to the local Finds Liaison Officer. It is now on display in Ely Museum.
In his talk Neil Wilkin will highlight the skill required to make this spectacular item. He will compare it to other examples from across Britain, Ireland, and France and will then consider where the torc fits into the story of the Bronze Age, with special mention of the way fashions and ways of dressing the body changed over the course of 1,500 years. The talk will then address the big questions we all want to answer: what was the function of such a large and ostentatious torc, and why was it made and deposited, seemingly on purpose at the edge of the fens?
Dr Neil Wilkin has been curator of Early Europe in the department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory at the British Museum, since 2012.

Global transitions to agriculture have often been associated with deteriorating health, decreasing body size, and declining skeletal robusticity. This is not true of coastal foragers and farmers, as marine and freshwater ecosystems often provided richer and more varied sources of food, and gave seaside groups unique challenges to survival. Human skeletons dating to the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age in Estonia and Latvia (9,000 BCE—850 CE) provide a unique opportunity to study biological changes during agricultural transitions on the coast. In this talk, various bone imaging and palaeopathological techniques will be presented as effective methods for studying prehistoric health, diet and activity.
Michael is a biological anthropologist based in The Hague, Netherlands, specializing in human palaeopathology and coastal bioarchaeology. He holds MPhil and PhD degrees in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. On the whole, Michael's research explores the various influences that affect the shape of the human skeleton: environment, disease, diet, physical activity and genetics. His other activities include advocacy for greater climate change awareness, and working in the public communication of science.

Wednesday 15th May Andy Peachey ‘Archaeology along the East Anglia ONE cable route: changing the landscape
of the River Deben Valley in east Suffolk’

The excavation of a cable route to serve the East Anglia ONE off shore wind farm has allowed an unprecedented opportunity for archaeologists to investigate the landscape of the Deben Valley and its tributaries to the east and north of Ipswich. Archaeologists have recorded remains of every period, including new evidence for late Bronze age settlement and enclosures, with field systems similar to those still present today; as well as Roman farmsteads that relate closely to a Saxon hall and village. But most notable is a monumental prehistoric enclosure situated on a hill slope that contains a wooden trackway. The preservation of this trackway is exceptional due to the presence of springs that kept the vast ditch system waterlogged. The trackway may have acted as a platform within a monument that was designed to be viewed at the head of the river valley, with initial radiocarbon dates indicating it was established close to the beginning of the early Neolithic period, and re-laid subsequently in that period, coinciding with the establishment of agrarian communities in Britain. Prehistoric pottery is rare on the site, but other artefacts have suggested a hugely symbolic purpose.